Vehicle routing problems (VRPs) have been the subject of intense and fast-growing research for the last six decades. These problems have received much attention in combinatorial optimization, especially in operations research and transportation. This paper aims to systematically review and analyze recent research on the VRP by covering 89 papers between 2001 and 2022. The focus of this study is on the new and emerging topics existing in the VRP, including feeder VRP (FVRP), real-time VRP (RTVRP), and collaborative VRP (CVRP) for urban transportation. To this end, recent findings are reviewed to recognize novel research gaps for the problem. Based on reviews, we suggest applying multi-agent solving approaches and novel metaheuristic algorithms in the FVRP. Furthermore, studying the real-time methodology in various routing problems such as electric VRP (EVRP), two-echelon VRP (2E-VRP), rich VRP (RVRP), agro-food supply chains, biomass supply chain, and healthcare supply chains are other suggestions of this research. Finally, integrating new topics in the CVRP (e.g., blockchain, big data, and data mining) are among the research gaps identified in this review.
